Posts from — February 2025

The Mark IV apartments, Beachwood, Ohio

I’m at my parents’ apartment near I-271. So loud — the highway. I’ll hitch down to Cedar-Taylor to get some air.

I’d like to see Sleeper and American Graffiti.

Cleveland . . . it makes one stop and think. I’m thinking of Boston and New York.

The history of the Jews. My parents grew up in the Kinsman neighborhood. Ezra lived in Babylonia.

How do you get the girls if you don’t go near them?

I left my heart in Sandusky.

My friend Chap drove his Corvette up and down Mayfield Road with 11 other Corvette drivers. Chap has a 350-hp engine with headers, minus emission controls.

I saw Sleeper. I resented the Jewish stereotypes.

Stan Smith vs. John Newcombe.

Never write about a place you haven’t done time in. And detail-for-detail-sake is useless.

I don’t want to live here.

—

Recap:

My dad said, “I’m sure you’ll be a success some day.”

At what? Whatever, I should do a good job of it. My father never said to me, “What are your plans? What do you see yourself doing in ten years?” That would have been cruel.

My post-college days were hell, but not that hellish. My mother lined up blind dates for me. The dates were usually with daughters of my mom’s friends. I took the girls to bars and restaurants and ordered 7&7s. That was my booze repertoire: 7&7.

Then I got feedback about the dates from my mother, who picked up tidbits at bridge games. Some of the girls liked me, some didn’t. One date thought I was “a little weird.”

She was weird. She had no business dragging me through her dad’s kangaroo court (his living room had World War II medals on the wall). What are my plans? What do you do?

What’s an apricot sour? That’s what the girl ordered at the bar.

Chap asked me to go to the Corvette rally at Manner’s Big Boy, Mayfield Heights. He had a brand-new 1974 ’Vette. He said, “You think you’re too good for my ’Vette, Stratton. You’d prefer a VW bus with a hippie slut. Why not try real chicks and real cars . . . Friday night at the Strongsville Holiday Inn, it’s crawling with chicks and ’Vettes. No, you’d rather be in Cleveland Heights. Any city that has a bumper sticker like that is a losing proposition.”

When my sentence (nine months) at the Mark IV was up, I moved to Cleveland Heights, into a double, sharing it with three guys I met off the Case Western Reserve rooms-for-rent bulletin board.

I’ve been in Cleveland Heights ever since, and I haven’t seen Chap in more than 35 years. He doesn’t hang around klezmer concerts, for one thing. Alice knocked on the door of the Cleveland Heights double in 1977, looking for a room to rent. Mom’s Dating Service, RIP.

 
This acclaimed animation is from the guys over at Challah Barbaric. The vid (below) may seem, at first glance, to be navel-gazing. It’s not. It’s magic. The two main characters — a sleazy guy and a bug-eyed naïf — turn the cutthroat world of real estate into something warm and fuzzy and slightly erotic  — or robotic.

The landlord in the vid is so pompous at first. Then more so. The plot twist: the young lady draws forth the landlord’s humanity and even a Peter, Paul and Mary lyric.

Should I rent to a Stripper? 2:57 minutes. United States . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSzSE1QHnpA&t=1s

 
My time is worth $107.98 an hour.

I lost two harmonicas at a gig yesterday. I never lose anything. And I had bragged about finding my wife’s Visa card, which had been missing for a day. Alice considered calling the 800-number and canceling. No, Alice, that’s nightmare city. Alice walked in the snow for four miles looking for the Visa card, which she thought might have fallen out of her pocket while biking.

She didn’t find the card. I found it in the bedroom under a bed. I don’t know how the card got there. I always use a flashlight to search for missing stuff. That’s my trick; the flashlight helps me focus.

My harmonicas were in a gig bag, which I hadn’t fully zipped. I think the harps wound up in the snow in the parking lot at a nursing home, where I had a gig last night. I didn’t “hear” the harps fall in the snow. The last time I lost something was a ski cap — also in the snow.

I think I’ll order two harps on Amazon, $107.98 total. The harmonicas will arrive tomorrow. I don’t feel like driving 16 minutes each way to the nursing home to look for the harps. That’s 12 miles round-trip — a significant haul by Cleveland standards. And then another half hour looking for the harps.

I’ve called the nursing home. So far, nothing.

My two choices: 1) pay $108 for two harps, or 2) drive 32 minutes, plus spend time looking for the harps in the snow. And don’t forget the depreciation on my car.

(“Yesterday” was actually Jan. 16, 2025. I bought the harps.)

 
Nobody is tall in my family. I was 5-feet-2 in ninth grade. But I played on the football team! I rode the bench; the coach wouldn’t put me in. He thought I’d get killed. He had me drill with a similar five-foot guy, who also never saw action.

My parents wanted me to play tennis. Figures.

I suited up for the Benedictine game. The head coach wanted “a lot of presence,” as he put it, so he brought the entire 9th-through-12th-grade team to the game– frosh (including me), JV, and varsity. This was 2002, when Benedictine had Ray Williams, who went on to win the “Mr. Football” award for best high school player in Ohio. He signed with West Virginia University.

Ray Williams

Our coach warned us all year about Williams. About 80 of us got on the school bus for Benedictine. We were a presence. And then in the very first play, Williams ran with it and we knew we were toast.

Williams wound up an accessory to a murder, so he never played at West Virginia. He played some at Toledo, but I think he screwed that up, too. And then he played a bit at Shaw University in North Carolina. I wonder what happened to him. There’s a documentary about him, Mr. Football, but it apparently has never played anywhere.

All I know is Ray Williams was an absolute beast at Benedictine. I watched him absolutely crush for 40 carries a night. Everyone knew who was getting the ball, every snap, but no one could stop the kid.

For the record, I’m now 5-feet-9, in my thirties and playing tennis.

(fiction)